How Dropping the Draft Helped to Turn America Into a Militaristic State

From AlterNet:

That loaded term - "militarism" - was, in fact, a prominent part of the 1970 report by President Nixon's Commission on an All-Volunteer Force. In its findings, the panel worried about "a cycle of anti-militarism" in a nation then questioning America's increasingly martial posture.

Noting that "the draft is a major source of antagonism" toward the growing military-industrial complex, the report praised the fact that "an all-volunteer force offers an obvious opportunity to curb the growth of anti-militaristic sentiment."

And

The pattern suggests that in the absence of conscription, dissent - if it exists at all - becomes a low-grade affair (an email, a petition, etc.) but not the kind of serious movement required to compel military policy changes. Why? Because as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, without a draft "wars remain an abstraction - a distant and unpleasant series of news items that does not affect (most people) personally.”

The danger, says West Point's Lance Betros, is that Americans then "reflexively move towards a military solution before they will try all the other elements of national power."

More here.

This is really easy for me to say because, at the age of forty five, if I get drafted, it means we've been successfully invaded and are in a desperate fight for existence as a nation.  And that ain't gonna happen in my lifetime, I'm quite sure.  But yeah, for the reasons the article suggests, I support a draft.  Actually, I support universal service, which doesn't mean that everybody has to fight, only that they serve the nation in some capacity, but that may be the Robert Heinlein fan in me bubbling to the surface.  But, one way or the other, I fully support using state power to force citizens to serve the nation.

In the same way that the argument for reinstating the draft asserts that the US will continue to misuse its military unless our armed forces are composed of a broad swath of American society, I'm very much of the opinion that Americans will continue to ignore their citizenship responsibilities unless they are mandated to directly serve the country.  I mean, seriously.  Citizenship is an f'ing joke in this country.  Most people don't vote.  Most people who get jury summonses either curse them or plot and scheme to find a way out of them.  Most people don't keep themselves informed on the important issues of the day--indeed, many who think they do just catch a couple of headlines on Fox or the Daily Show and call it a day.  Freedom is all about being a consumer.  But when the government is directly involved in your life, when you have a personal relationship with it, what this nation does collectively hits much closer to home.

But the quickest and easiest step in this direction is to reinstate the draft, as soon as possible.  Our all volunteer force is very professional, yes, but professionalism also means pursuing a career.  And when your career depends on always following orders, even when those orders are to torture, or to bomb civilians, you're going to follow orders.  Professionalism exerts downward pressure on the ethics and morals of our soldiers.  We've got to lessen this influence somehow, and filling the military's ranks with citizen-soldiers is a damned fine way to do it.

Yeah, being drafted sucks, I'm sure.  But there's much more at stake here than a couple of years out of one's life.  We have responsibilities as citizens.  Extraordinarily important responsibilities.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$